I think that every site could do with some minimalism. You certainly don’t have to take it to the extent I did with The Loop, but even cleaning up and eliminating those elements that aren’t needed would make a big difference for the visitor.

Steven Fisher

The only bits necessary in the sidebar are the About link, Advertising and Search box. Everything else could just go into the About page. The byline (?) there is redundant with the footer, for instance.

Am I suggesting you do this? No, of course not. (Well, maybe do something about the redundancy in the sidebar and footer. Now that I know it’s there, I can’t unsee it!) It wouldn’t be at all beneficial to the site.

My only point is that The Loop does not represent an extreme, only something that’s comfortable to readers and uncomfortable to traditional shovel content providers.

(I’ve said this before, but worth mentioning again: Well done, Jim.)

http://twitter.com/_steveCollins Stephen Collins

Funny. I think the site with that article has 17 ads/adslots on the page.

Not exactly minimal.

@ChristoDeluxe

If only that site compared in any way to The Loop’s design — I got 5 lines of text after the page loaded, on my full-height web browser. Must kill the writer to have to publish that article on a site that’s so bogged down with crap!